Democracy School

Hashim Thaci is on unfamiliar ground. The Albanian guerrilla leader, once the bane of Serbian forces in Kosovo's hinterlands, has arrived triumphant in Pristina and is undergoing his first rite of passage as an aspiring politician: dinner with TIME. Looking out across a table laden with the best postwar cuisine available--three platters of chicken franks, canned tuna and tomatoes--the 30-year-old rebel answers questions with a voice at once shy and calculating. Trying his best to toe the Western line, he assures us repeatedly, "We will live up to the obligations given to us." But as dinner stretches to midnight, Thaci begins to flag. Perhaps it is the endless days of negotiations with the U.S. or the months of war or just the barrage of journalists' questions about how exactly he hopes to fix this shattered land. Even the lady of the rented house, Mevlyde Kadriu, has questions: "Well, when are we going back to our jobs?" she asks boldly. Thaci shifts wearily in his seat, unloads a few oblique evasions and turns back to his demitasse of Nescafe.

As revolutionaries go, Thaci has a dream resume. Young, attractive and toting a sexy nickname, "the Snake," he is the face of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The glamour is burnished by accomplishment: Kosovar Albanians see him as the man who got them NATO military support and the right to an autonomous existence. And he has become the go-to man in postwar Kosovo. When the generals of the KFOR (Kosovo Force) peacekeeping troops and K.L.A. commanders could not arrive at an agreement to demilitarize the rebel army, they called Thaci to find a solution.

But when it comes to politics, the Snake is still a rank amateur. Kosovo is in ruins, his rebel army is edgy about its demilitarization, and political rivals on all sides are waiting for him to slip up. He'll also face political challenges at home--most notably from the elected President of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, and from newspaper publisher Veton Surroi. Still, the U.S. has anointed him, at least temporarily, as its man. On a visit to Pristina last week, State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin took Thaci for a highly public cup of coffee at a well-known downtown cafe. And in a busy week last week, the U.S. and NATO began putting Thaci through what some were calling "democracy school," educating him about everything from elections (he was out kissing babies one morning) to dealing with journalists (his dinner with TIME).

Thaci started his political life in the student union of Pristina University in the late '80s, associating with a radical Marxist-Leninist group that previously had ties to Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha. After graduating with a degree in history in 1991, Thaci grew impatient with political conspiracy as a way to kick Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo. In June 1993 he and his compatriots turned to military action. Along with his two most trusted associates, Kadri Veseli and Fatmir Limaj, he launched one of the first armed attacks against Serbian forces. By the time Kosovo's rebellion gained traction in 1997, Thaci had survived Serbian reprisals and was at the top of the disparate guerrilla force.